Why We're Only Now Paying Attention to Boko Haram Is a Disgrace

Timothy R. Furnish
holds a PhD in Islamic, African and World history and works as an
author, analyst and consultant to the US military. His website is
www.mahdiwatch.org and he is
on Twitter as @occidentaljihad

The Nigerian
Islamic terrorist group Boko Haram has finally grabbed the world’s
attention via its seizure of almost 300 Christian girls and its
threats to sell them into (sex) slavery. But the group has actually
been active for some 12 years, and in point of fact constitutes not
some new, virulent form of African Islam but, rather, simply the
latest in a long series of similar jihadist and shari`a-imposing
groups going back for centuries in that part of the continent.

Nigeria is the
most-populous nation in Africa, and its 160 million inhabitants are
almost evenly divided between Christians (in the south) and Muslims
(in the north). There are also a number of important ethnolinguistic
divisions—notably Hausa, Fulani, Yoruba, Ibo and Ijaw. Nigeria is
the world’s 14th-largest oil producer and the fifth-largest
supplier to the US. It is also, according to revamped
metrics, the largest economy on the African continent. Despite
its enormous size, Nigeria has a relatively small military: only
about 85,000 troops. (Compare that with Egypt, which has half
Nigeria’s population but an army of over 400,000 men.)

Modern Nigeria was
created by the British in 1903. The major polity they incorporated
into the new colonial territory was the Sokoto Caliphate, which had
encompassed not just modern northern Nigeria and Cameroon, but also
parts of Niger and Chad, from its creation in the early 19th century
at the guidance of Usman Don Fodio (d. 1817), the great Hausa Muslim
mujaddid (“renewer” of Islam) whom many considered the
Mahdi. Don Fodio’s movement was the most successful of a legion
of Muslim jihads in West Africa (modern Mauritania, Senegal, Nigeria,
etc.) between the 16th and 20th centuries. During its century of
existence, the Sokoto state enforced shari`a law, which
included brutal criminal punishments and the relegation of Christians
to second-class dhimmi status. (Also, under Caliph Don Fodio
and his successors, other jihads in West, Central and North Africa
were given ideological and, if possible, financial support.) Don
Fodio’s Islamization campaign was so successful that to this day in
Nigeria the denizens of the former caliphal areas identify themselves
first and foremost by their religion, Islam, rather than by their
ethnolinguistic group—unlike most other Nigerians for whom the
latter took priority. (This, however, does seem to be changing as
Ibo, Yoruba and Ijaw peoples are increasingly identifying themselves
as Christians, over against the depredations of Boko Haram.)

Under British rule,
northern Nigeria and its former caliphal rulers and subjects were
actually insulated from Western influences, under a well-meaning
British policy of tolerance. However, the major result of this
policy—in effect for almost six decades, until Nigerian
independence in 1960—has been the underdevelopment and ideological
isolation of the Muslim communities of the former Sokoto Caliphate,
and the sowing of fertile ground for the likes of Boko Haram.
However, that group did not spring into existence ex nihilo in
2002; rather, it emerged from the re-imposition of Islam into
Nigeria’s political sphere which began only about a decade after
independence. The most important Islamic political party was Jama`at
Izalat al-Bida wa-Iqamat al-Sunna (“Society for the Eradication
of Innovation and Establishment of the Sunna”), founded in 1978 by
Abubakr Gumi (d. 1992), former Chief Mufti of Nigeria. He had strong
Wahhabi leanings and so, too, did Izala, which received support from
Saudi Arabia (despite the heretical belief that women could be
educated). Two other influential Nigerian Islamic organizations were
the Islamic Movement in Nigeria[IMN] and its offshoot, the Movement
for Islamic Revival [MIR]. Both of these groups expressed open
admiration for the Islamic Republic of Iran and its founder Ayatollah
Khomeini, and so were often called “Shi`ite” by
Nigerians—although they were actually Sunni. To add to the
confusion, IMN and MIR were also sometimes labeled the Nigerian
“Muslim Brotherhood”—although they had nothing to do with the
Egyptian-created Muslim Brotherhood which has recently been so
prominent in the “Arab Spring.” IMN and MIR were also vocal
supporters of Bin Ladin and al-Qa’ida—yet received financial (and
other) support from Tehran. Perhaps the most direct precursor to
Boko Haram was Yan Tatsine or Maitatsine—named after its founder,
Muhammad Marwa Maitatsine (d. 1980), “the Curser” (who regularly
condemned other Muslims via takfir, “charge of unbelief”).
Maitatsine considered himself another Islamic renewer, and perhaps
even the Mahdi, and told his followers to engage in violent jihad
against Nigerian federal soldiers and police forces, as well as other
Muslims. Finally, it should be noted that the two major Sufi
(Islamic mystical) orders operating in Nigeria, the Qadiris and the
Tijanis, have long been opposed to the Wahhabi-fundamentalist vision
of Islam and have worked politically, religiously, and sometimes
martially to oppose groups like Izala and Maitatsine. This acrimony
carries over into modern Nigeria, as Boko Haram deems the Sufis to be
heretical “innovators” and not true Muslims.

Because of the pressure of such Sunni Islamist groups, however, the
Nigerian federal government devolved power to them in 1999-2000,
allowing the imposition of some aspects of shari`a law in the
country’s 12 northern, majority-Muslim states. However, this was
deemed insufficiently Islamic by many in the the realms of the former
Sokoto Caliphate, motivating Muhammad Yusuf (d. 2009) to establish
“The Sunni Group for Islamic Da`wa and Jihad in African Land
Formerly Known as Nigeria”—eventually becoming just Boko Haram,
“[Western] Book(s) are Forbidden.” These “Nigerian Taliban”
as they styled themselves included many highly-educated professors
and students from Islamic universities in places like Maidaguri and
Kano (not just uneducated poor, as conventional wisdom would have
it). Their campaign of attacks on police stations and Nigerian
federal troops sparked a government riposte, and in 2009 over 700
Boko Haram members—including Yusuf—were killed. His lieutenant,
Shaykh Muhammad Abubakr
b. Muhammad al-Shawka (or Shekaw), by all accounts a
highly-educated Islamic scholar, took over and, if anything, has
ratcheted up the violence; for example, the mass
destruction of churches and killings of Christians really began
under Shawka’s leadership. He has also sought, with some success,
to link Boko Haram with other like-minded groups in Africa: al-Qa`ida
in the Islamic Maghrib [AQIM], al-Shabab, and, in the wake of
al-Qadhafi’s ouster in Libya, perhaps Ansar al-Shari`a and such
organizations in the far south of that country.

Shawka may have a
“twisted”
view of Islam, but if so he would seem to have plenty of company.
According
to Pew poll data, 88% of Nigerian Muslims want Islam to play a
large role in politics; 58% self-identify as “fundamentalist”
Muslims; well 0ver 50% support harsh shari`a punishments for
adultery, theft or “apostasy”—converting to another religion
from Islam. Futhermore, over a third of Nigeria’s Muslims say
suicide bombing is “often” or “sometimes” justified. In
light of the high degree of Nigerian Muslim support for such
fundamentalist Islam, it is not hard to see how Boko Haram operates
with such impunity in large parts of that country. Attempts by some
Muslim authorities to de-legitimize Boko Haram, such as
unsubstantiated claims that its jihad or infidel-female-seizing
activities are “unIslamic,” founder on the apparent text of the
Qur’an, which enjoins the former in Sura
al-Tawbah [IX]:5 and the latter in Sura
al-Nisa’ [IV]:24—as well as on the Hadiths of Muhammad
himself, which likewise favor fighting
infidels and taking
their women as sex slaves. (This is the same problem that
“moderate” Muslims have with refuting claims of true Islamic
fidelity from the Taliban, al-Qa`ida, Jabhat al-Nusra, the Wahhabis,
et al.)

Boko Haram began as
a local Nigerian jihadist group, but it has linked up with the global
jihad movement (mainly via its offshoot Ansaru)
and so has transformed into a regional threat across not just Nigeria
but Cameroon, Niger, Chad and possibly Mali, Mauritania, Algerian and
even Libya. Yusuf’s and now Shawka’s call to restore, in
effect, the Sokoto Caliphate and true shari`a resonates with
many Muslims in that part of Africa (as well as elsewhere in the
Muslim world). The American response must be more than Michelle
Obama’s mere hashtags,
or even her husband’s robust
drone strike program—which may kill
many al-Qa`ida number twos, but does little to nothing in terms
of undermining the Islamic rationale for jihad. Likewise, simply
droning on about Islam being the “religion of peace”—as
President Obama, his Attorney General, and his CIA Director do on a
regular basis—has yet to dissuade a single dedicated Muslim, Boko
Haram or otherwise, from choosing to kill infidels fi sabil Allah,
“on the path of Allah.” Pretending that Boko Haram and its ilk
are “extremist” or “radical” simply indicates an inability—or
refusal—to correctly diagnose the problem—which is a literal
understanding and application of the Qur’an and the Hadiths.
Until the non-Muslim world (and the Muslims who profess to be
moderate) acknowledge this
inconvenient truth, the jihad will continue to burn and consume.

There are Muslims
in West Africa in general, and Nigeria in particular, who eschew
offensive jihad and also are capable of standing up to Boko Haram—the
aforementioned Sufis of the Qadiriya and Tijaniya orders. (Such is
the case in Somalia, where one of the major reasons that the jihadist
Shabab have been halted in their drive to take over the country is
that the Sufis
of Somalia banded together and fought them, ideologically and
martially.) The federal government in Nigeria would be wise to
enlist that country’s many Sufis in a similar campaign; in
particular, the Sufi shaykhs have the education and Islamic
legitimacy to challenge the Qur’anic and Hadith literalism of Boko
Haram and Ansaru. Merely killing Boko Haram members will not destroy
the movement, as President Goodluck Jonathan’s local emulation of
Obama’s global strategy proves on a daily basis; rather, Boko
Haram’s clearly-articulated Islamic ideology must be
stigmatized—and that can only be done by Islamic leaders, not
outsiders like Obama or Tony Blair. Should such a strategy fail, it
may come to pass that the least bad option for Nigeria is partition
of the country: giving the northerners their desired Islamic state,
and allowing the south its freedom as a Christian-majority one. Of
course, the problem with this solution is that Africa would then be
home to a potential terrorist haven on the order of the Taliban’s
Afghanistan, and one much less isolated. But as time goes by,
Nigeria’s position on the fault-line between Christian and Muslim
civilization appears not just increasingly precarious, but
dangerously unsustainable.